Carter G. Woodson House

The National Park Service acquired the Carter G. Woodson House at 1538 9th Street NW in 2005. The Park Service website states:

Completion of the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site will include a restoration and renovation of historic buildings; development, fabrication, and installation of interpretative exhibits; production and distribution of educational and interpretative materials and other site improvement such as parking, way-finding signs, wayside exhibits and much more.

The house however is still “vacant, closed to the public, and in need of rehabilitation.” More information about the house and Carter G. Woodson himself, after the jump.

The Carter G. Woodson Home at 1538 9th Street, NW in Washington, DC, was Dr. Woodson’s home from 1915 until his death in 1950. He directed the operations of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History and pursued his own studies of African-American history from there. After his death, the home continued to serve as the national headquarters of the Association until the early 1970s. It is now vacant, closed to the public, and in need of rehabilitation. The home was acquired by the National Park Service in 2005.

Dr. Woodson was the son of former slaves, but earned his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1912—only the second black American to do so (after W. E. B. DuBois). This achievement was even more extraordinary since he did not begin his formal education until he was 20 years old. He had been denied access to public education in Canton, Virginia, where he was born in 1875, and did not start school until he moved to Huntington, West Virginia. He received his high school diploma two years later, a bachelor’s degree from Berea College in 1897, and went on to earn A.B. and M.A. degrees from the University of Chicago before attending Harvard.

In 1915, he founded The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (the Association) and The Associated Publishers to assure an outlet for the publication of works of African-American history and the scholarly work of black scholars. The Association is now known as The Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH). In 1926 the Association, under Dr. Woodson’s leadership, established Negro History Week to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Today this commemoration has expanded into Black History Month.

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